Just the Right Shade of Strawberry Blonde
by kimanioverthinks
Summary: To say there weren't other girls would have been a lie. / In which Stiles has other girls, but none of them are Lydia.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf, obviously, but I do wish I did own me some Stiles Stilinsky.**

* * *

_To say there weren't other girls would have been a lie._

* * *

In the fifth grade, he shares his chocolate milk with Jenna Peralto and she's his girlfriend for all of four periods before it's over. She passes a scrap of rolled up paper to Kelly Larmond, who passes it to Kevin MacFarlane who passes it to Lydia Martin, who passes it to Scott before it gets to him.

He's so busy staring at Lydia that he hardly notices that Jenna is trying to get his attention. "From me," she's mouthing over and over again. _I wanna break up_, she writes in purple scented pen and he thinks it's funny how he's only, like, nine and a half, but he knows it won't matter much in five years anyways.

He pushes the paper into his backpack and continues staring at Lydia, who twirls a lock of her strawberry blonde hair around her finger.

* * *

He's fourteen when he has his first kiss.

Her name is Amy Adams and she's in his English class. They're sitting really close on the edge of the bathtub in one of the bathrooms at one of Jackson Whittemore's parties. Her hair is the wrong shade of blonde, but her lips taste like the same cotton candy that Lydia smells like.

He tries not to breathe too hard into her mouth as her tongue awkwardly pokes at his. He pulls away and wipes saliva off his chin—his or hers? Maybe both...—and sits back.

She smiles at him and her eyes crinkle up and she pushes her hair behind her ears. He just stares at the wall and tries not to look too disappointed.

* * *

He sorta goes out with this one girl for a little while at the end of freshman year. He never actually asks her to be his girlfriend, but he casually invites her to get pizza with him and Scott one Friday night and she agrees. They get pizza twice, with Scott, and go bowling once by themselves.

The conversations are always awkward, and he only calls her on the phone once. They stick to texting and he takes fifteen minutes to reply to each message and she texts in the worst grammar. It makes him laugh, and not in a good way.

She sucks at bowling, but he's not too bad. They don't do very well as a team. He spends most of the time telling her to relax her arm—"I'm trying, jeez!"—and she spends most of the time reapplying her lipgloss. He later learns that the lipgloss tastes sorta like really bad Halloween candy and is quite sticky. It makes his lips tingle unpleasantly.

They never really officially "break up", but one day he stops taking fifteen minutes to reply and just doesn't bother and she doesn't hug him in the halls. Neither of them wave to each other. They just go back to being strangers, just like that.

* * *

At the beginning of sophomore year, he takes this one girl to the Back to School formal and she's really nice and she looks really pretty in her blue dress. She's a terrible dancer, though.

"I'm sorry about your shoes," she says for the fifth time that night.

He thinks his toes have suffered more trauma than his scuffed shoes, but doesn't say this. "It's okay. You're not _that_ bad a dancer."

"You're right," she laughs. "I'm worse."

He sheepishly nods and smiles to soften her embarrassment because she's really nice and he feels bad.

They sit at one of the far tables in the smelly gym turned dance floor and she takes off her shoes under the table. He stares at Lydia and Jackson, who look like they're dancing on a cloud. He groans to himself, maybe a little bit too loudly.

She follows his stare.

"So, Lydia, huh," she says finally. It isn't a question, so he doesn't answer. He looks down at his lap. "I totally get it. She's really pretty."

He thinks that maybe it's more than that. She's beautiful, and she's special. He thinks maybe she'll always just be a little too good to be true, and definitely too good for him.

* * *

So, it definitely isn't that there weren't other girls.

Maybe it's just that he'll never be satisfied until it's _her_.


End file.
